The University of Richmond Animates the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

in History, Maps | January 7th, 2014

rates_of_travel

In 1902, the new­ly estab­lished Carnegie Insti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton set out to devel­op “a real­ly first rate atlas of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” Work on the atlas began in earnest in 1912, under the direc­tion of the naval his­to­ri­an Charles O. Paullin, who spent the bet­ter part of the next 15 years bring­ing it to life. In 1929, the Amer­i­can Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety (AGS), along with the emi­nent geo­g­ra­ph­er John K. Wright, took over the project and brought it to com­ple­tion. The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States was final­ly pub­lished in 1932 to wide crit­i­cal acclaim. Called a “mon­u­ment to his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship,” the com­pendi­um fea­tured near­ly 700 indi­vid­ual maps that gave visu­al insights into 500 years of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Top­ic cov­ered includ­ed the “explo­ration and set­tle­ment of the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent, the loca­tion of col­leges and church­es, dis­putes over inter­na­tion­al and state bound­aries, vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and in Con­gress, reforms from women’s suf­frage to workmen’s com­pen­sa­tion, trans­porta­tion, indus­tries, agri­cul­ture, com­merce, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, mil­i­tary his­to­ry” and much more.

The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States remains a valu­able his­tor­i­cal resource today. But, for all of these years, it had one notable short­com­ing. Around the time of its first pub­li­ca­tion, John K. Wright acknowl­edged that “The ide­al his­tor­i­cal atlas might well be a col­lec­tion of motion-pic­ture maps, if these could be dis­played on the pages of a book with­out the para­pher­na­lia of pro­jec­tor, reel, and screen.” The tech­nol­o­gy that would lend itself to cre­at­ing motion-pic­ture maps was­n’t avail­able in the 1930s. But it is today. And thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Richmond’s Dig­i­tal Schol­ar­ship Lab, we can now view The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States in a new dig­i­tal, some­times ani­mat­ed for­mat. If you want to see a good exam­ple of his­tor­i­cal data put into motion, then you might want to check out this map of Amer­i­can Explo­rations in the West, 1803–1852. (Click here and then click “Ani­mate” at the bot­tom of the screen.) This map will trace for you the expe­di­tions of Lewis and Clark and many oth­er explor­ers. Then, if you’re ready to be an explor­er your­self, you can start your jour­ney through the dig­i­tized atlas by enter­ing the Table of Con­tents.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Hen­ry David Thoreau’s Hand-Drawn Map of Cape Cod (1866)

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures by Mar­tin Lewis (Stan­ford) in our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es

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The Ten-Year Lunch: Watch the Award-Winning Documentary About the Great Writers Who Sat at the Algonquin Round Table

in Film, History | January 6th, 2014

After reach­ing the rank of Sergeant dur­ing World War I, Alexan­der Wooll­cott returned to New York to become a dra­ma crit­ic for the New York Times. Wooll­cott was a man of large bulk and out­sized per­son­al­i­ty, whose sharp, acer­bic wit made him pop­u­lar with his read­ers. Accord­ing to The Ten-Year Lunch, an Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tary about the New York group of writ­ers and jour­nal­ists known as the Algo­nquin Round Table, Woollcott’s quick tongue made his bom­bas­tic pres­ence near­ly unbear­able to his friends:

When he returned from the war, Wooll­cott boast­ed of his mil­i­tary adven­tures so often and so loud­ly that his friends grew tired of lis­ten­ing. He began every sen­tence with “When I was in the the­atre of war…” Irri­tat­ed by his pom­pos­i­ty, press agent Mur­doch Pem­ber­ton lured Wooll­cott [to the Algo­nquin Hotel] with the promise of an ace pas­try chef. The idea was to hold a sort of roast, at which a num­ber of crit­ics and jour­nal­ists from around town would come and poke fun at him.

For bet­ter or worse, the attempt to punc­ture Woollcott’s ego at the Algo­nquin Hotel was unsuc­cess­ful. Rather than take offence, Wooll­cott was flat­tered by the atten­tion, and the var­i­ous fig­ures in atten­dance also thor­ough­ly enjoyed them­selves. Serendip­i­tous­ly, the leg­endary lun­cheons of the Algo­nquin Round Table were born.

Algonquin_Round_Table
Most of the Table’s mem­bers had tak­en part in the war, to one degree or anoth­er: jour­nal­ist Ruth Hale and her syn­di­cat­ed-colum­nist hus­band Hey­wood Broun had been war cor­re­spon­dents; New York­er founder Harold Ross had edit­ed the mil­i­tary news­pa­per Stars & Stripes; acclaimed colum­nist Franklin Pierce Adams had made Cap­tain. Oth­er mem­bers includ­ed poet and crit­ic Dorothy Park­er, a trag­ic roman­tic who had become the city’s most quotable woman. (Parker’s inex­haustible sup­ply of wit­ti­cisms still feels fresh today: when asked to use the word hor­ti­cul­ture in a sen­tence, Park­er replied, “You can lead a whore to cul­ture, but you can’t make her think.”) Parker’s best friend was humorist and essay­ist Robert Bench­ley, who had once writ­ten an essay explor­ing New­found­land fish­ing rights for his Inter­na­tion­al Law class at Har­vard from the unortho­dox per­spec­tive of the fish. Fre­quent­ly join­ing them was Neysa McNein, a sought-after illus­tra­tor who host­ed the Table’s after­noon gath­er­ings in her stu­dio, where Irv­ing Berlin could occa­sion­al­ly be found play­ing the piano.

The near-dai­ly meet­ings at the Algo­nquin Hotel fos­tered a close-knit cul­tur­al fra­ter­ni­ty of New York’s best writ­ers, illus­tra­tors, and artists. The group vaca­tioned togeth­er at their joint­ly-owned Ver­mont island, played games of pok­er wager­ing hous­es and hon­ey­moons, and crit­i­cized each other’s work. When­ev­er a mem­ber of the Round Table would make a con­ceit­ed remark, every­one would imme­di­ate­ly rise and bow, hon­or­ing their friend’s regal affec­ta­tions. The only excep­tion to the rule was Wooll­cott, whose bread and but­ter pom­pos­i­ty was tol­er­at­ed by virtue of its reg­u­lar­i­ty.

With its inter­views of orig­i­nal Table mem­bers, the doc­u­men­tary is a tan­ta­liz­ing look at the lives of the men and women who ruled New York’s cul­tur­al milieu dur­ing the hey­day of the print­ed word. Equal parts wish for the idyl­lic past and his­to­ry of New York’s biggest cul­tur­al play­ers, The Ten-Year Lunch leaves one with a pang of odd­ly potent nos­tal­gia. We can’t rec­om­mend it enough.

In the image above, see Art Samuels, Char­lie MacArthur, Har­po Marx, Dorothy Park­er and Alexan­der Wooll­cott

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Vintage Films Revisits Literary Scene of 1920s New York, with Clips of Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, H.L. Mencken & Other Icons

in History, Video - Arts & Culture | January 4th, 2014

When young artists, be they writ­ers, painters, or musi­cians, aim to strike it big, they invari­ably choose to move to New York. Brook­lyn lofts, hopes of find­ing a like­mind­ed smart set, and the promise of good times beck­on count­less young men and women to devel­op their cre­ative careers in a city whose his­to­ry teems with out­sized aspi­ra­tions and even larg­er per­son­al­i­ties. New York has, after all, been a hub for artis­tic lumi­nar­ies since the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

In the 1961 doc­u­men­tary enti­tled New York In The Twen­ties, above, Wal­ter Cronkite gives a snap­shot of the tal­ent­ed crowd that was once drawn in by the city’s cul­tur­al rip­tide dur­ing the 1920s. The short video con­sists of inter­views with the pub­lish­er Alfred Knopf; New York Her­ald Tri­bune edi­tor Stan­ley Walk­er; and Pulitzer prize-win­ning author of The Green Pas­tures, Marc Con­nel­ly. Walk­er plays the part of the con­sum­mate New York news­pa­per­man, pin­ing for the days when decent cit­i­zens weren’t forced to rub shoul­ders with the boors now infest­ing the Westch­ester and Con­necti­cut trains. Con­nel­ly, in more affa­ble fash­ion, describes the fabled 1920s group of cre­ative minds known as the Algo­nquin Round Table:

Alexan­der Wooll­cott was sear­ing, acid, rude; I used to feel some­times his only exer­cise was ran­cour. But, he was engag­ing, was com­pelling, and amus­ing… Edna Fer­ber, young, indus­tri­ous, she used to scare us all to death by her habit of indus­try. George Kauf­man was cer­tain­ly one of the wit­ti­est of that group. George’s wit… had the sharp­ness of a sil­ver point etch­ing… There was… Harold Ross, founder of the New York­er. There was spec­u­la­tion about Ross, his curi­ous head of hair; it was very high, very thick. Some­body once said that that jun­gle pic­ture Chang had been filmed in it. I think it was George Kauf­mann that once said he looked like a dis­hon­est Lin­coln. 

A lot of peo­ple who knew noth­ing about the per­son­al lives or the atti­tudes … of the peo­ple at the round table… thought that it was a mutu­al admi­ra­tion soci­ety and a logrolling orga­ni­za­tion. It was any­thing but that because I promise you, the worst pan­nings ever received for our books or our plays came from the crit­i­cal friends who were mem­bers of that group.

Alfred Knopf, in turn, dis­cuss­es the glo­ry days of pub­lish­ers and writ­ers, as well as the genius of H. L. Menck­en, whom he describes as “the great­est edi­tor… that I’ve ever known.”

View­ing the hal­cy­on days of New York’s cre­ative scene, with its jazz clubs and speakeasies, it’s no won­der that Knopf, Walk­er, and Connelly’s accounts leave one with an ineluctable sense of nos­tal­gia. Of course, with its unceas­ing influx of artists, the city’s sub­stance remains the same today. It’s just that its Bloomberg-era steril­i­ty has led to a change in style.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Five Hardcore Deaths Suffered By Roman Emperors

in History | January 3rd, 2014

HumiliationValerianusHolbein

It is iron­ic that the ancient world that cre­at­ed the adage “mod­er­a­tion in all things” could dis­re­gard this coun­sel in fla­grant fash­ion. We’ve recent­ly writ­ten about a num­ber of var­i­ous Gre­co-Roman excess­es, from cer­tain Roman gas­tro­nom­ic overindul­gences to grotesque­ly imag­i­na­tive Greek tor­ture meth­ods. Today, con­tin­u­ing this trend, we bring you a short list of the most grue­some deaths of Roman emper­ors, based on The Awl’s 2012 post, “Roman Emper­ors, Up To AD 476 And Not Includ­ing Usurpers, In Order Of How Hard­core Their Deaths Were” com­piled by Josh Fruh­linger.

With­out fur­ther ado, and in no par­tic­u­lar order, here is the list:

Cara­calla & Geta (198–217 C.E.) – Unlike some of the oth­er emper­ors we’ve gath­ered here, Cara­calla real­ly was a jerk of colos­sal pro­por­tions. After reign­ing over Rome for a few years along­side his father, Sep­ti­m­ius Severus, Cara­calla took charge of the Roman Empire in tan­dem with his younger broth­er, Geta, in 211. The reign of broth­er­ly love didn’t last long: after fail­ing to assas­si­nate Geta dur­ing the rev­el­ry that was the fes­ti­val of Sat­ur­na­lia, Cara­calla had him slaugh­tered in their mother’s arms by loy­al cen­tu­ri­ons dur­ing a peace agree­ment meet­ing.

To fol­low with this frat­ri­ci­dal motif, Cara­calla him­self was mur­dered in 217 by a man whose broth­er Cara­calla may have had killed just days ear­li­er. Cara­calla had stopped on the side of a road to uri­nate while jour­ney­ing to Edessa, and was dis­patched by Julius Mar­tialis, one of his body­guards, with a sin­gle sword blow. Mar­tialis, in turn, suc­cumbed to an arrow fired by an Impe­r­i­al Guard archer. We pre­sume that Mar­tialis did­n’t have any more broth­ers, because things seem to have end­ed there.

Joannes (423–425 C.E.) – By the rare extant accounts, Joannes seems to have been a senior civ­il ser­vant of some abil­i­ty who had, to his detri­ment, failed to estab­lish a firm grip on the Empire. Although Pro­copius, an antique schol­ar, had called him “both gen­tle and well-endowed with sagac­i­ty and thor­ough­ly capa­ble of val­or­ous deeds,” Joannes was quick­ly engulfed in con­flict with the east­ern part of the Empire. In 425, the east­ern Empire’s army cap­tured him, cut off his hands, and placed him on a don­key to be parad­ed and jeered at in a hip­po­drome. Hav­ing suf­fered both insult and injury, Joannes was put out of his mis­ery and decap­i­tat­ed.

Com­modus (177–192 C. E.) – On paper, Com­modus should have made an exem­plary emper­or. Both his grand­fa­ther and father were emper­ors before him, and his father, Mar­cus Aure­lius, was praised both as a ruler and one of Stoicism’s cen­tral thinkers. Com­modus, how­ev­er, inher­it­ed nei­ther his father’s philo­soph­i­cal incli­na­tions nor his polit­i­cal smarts. To cap off a reign plagued by polit­i­cal strife, Com­modus let him­self fall vic­tim to some destruc­tive mega­lo­ma­nia: after Rome was engulfed in a con­fla­gra­tion, Com­modus declared him­self to be the new Romu­lus and cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly re-found­ed the city under the new name of Colo­nia Lucia Annia Com­modi­ana. The renam­ing of his empire’s fore­most city didn’t quite cut it, how­ev­er, and Com­modus resort­ed to renam­ing the months of the year after his 12 names. As Decem­ber of 192 (known, by this point, as Pius of 192) drew to a close, Com­modus was poi­soned by his con­cu­bine, but vom­it­ed the sub­stance, where­upon his wrestling train­ing part­ner was sent in by a num­ber of sen­a­tors to stran­gle the emper­or in the bath­tub.

Valer­ian (253–259 C. E.) – If Joannes’ demise strikes you as hav­ing been some­what undig­ni­fied, Valerian’s end was a full-blown assault on human decen­cy. Lac­tan­tius, an ear­ly Chris­t­ian author, claimed that after his cap­ture by the Per­sian king Sha­pur I, Valer­ian was put to use as a regal foot­stool to help the Per­sian ruler mount his horse. Valer­ian, under­stand­ably, expressed some con­ster­na­tion at such treat­ment, and offered Sha­pur a hefty sum in exchange for his free­dom. There are two ver­sions of what tran­spired next. In the first, Sha­pur express­es his dis­dain for Valerian’s measly offer by pour­ing molten gold down the for­mer emperor’s throat. In the sec­ond, Sha­pur also express­es his dis­dain, albeit in a more cre­ative fash­ion, this time by flay­ing Valerian’s skin and sub­se­quent­ly stuff­ing it with straw to be put on dis­play. Thank­ful­ly, there’s evi­dence to con­tra­dict Lac­tan­tius’ account, which leads some his­to­ri­ans to believe that Valer­ian was used as nei­ther fur­ni­ture nor gold recep­ta­cle, but rather lived a qui­et life with some of his sol­diers in an inde­ter­mi­nate Per­sian city. For his sake, we hope they’re right.

Above, you can see “The Humil­i­a­tion of Valer­ian by Sha­pur,” a pen and black ink sketch cre­at­ed by Hans Hol­bein the Younger in 1521.

For a full list of gory deaths, head on over to The Awl.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Cours­es on Roman his­to­ry can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Online Cours­es

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Watch Dinner for One, the Short Film That Has Become a Baffling New Year’s Tradition in Europe

in Comedy, History | January 1st, 2014

There are myr­i­ad New Year’s Eve cus­toms world­wide. In Japan, toshikoshi soba noo­dles are eat­en to bring in the com­ing year. In North Amer­i­ca, find­ing some­one to share a New Year’s Eve kiss with as the clock winds down has become a boon to the roman­ti­cal­ly-chal­lenged. In Ger­many, how­ev­er, a dif­fer­ent tra­di­tion has tak­en form: every year on Decem­ber 31st, TV net­works broad­cast an 18-minute-long black and white two-han­der com­e­dy skit.

In 1963, Germany’s Nord­deutsch­er Rund­funk tele­vi­sion sta­tion record­ed a sketch enti­tled Din­ner For One, per­formed by the British comics Fred­die Frin­ton and May War­den. The duo depict­ed an aging but­ler serv­ing his aris­to­crat­ic mis­tress, Miss Sophie, din­ner on the occa­sion of her 90th birth­day.

Although four addi­tion­al spots have been set at the table, the nonagenarian’s friends have long since passed away, and the but­ler is forced to take their places in drink­ing copi­ous amounts of alco­hol while toast­ing Miss Sophie’s health. Hilar­i­ty, as it is wont to do in such cas­es, ensues.

Since its ini­tial record­ing, the clip has become a New Year’s Eve sta­ple in Ger­many. Although Din­ner For One has nev­er been broad­cast in the U. S. or Cana­da, the clip has spread through­out Europe to Nor­way, Fin­land, Esto­nia, Lithua­nia, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, and beyond the con­ti­nen­t’s shores, to South Africa and Aus­tralia. In Swe­den, a bowd­ler­ized 11-minute ver­sion of the clip has been pro­duced, where, for decency’s sake, much of the butler’s booz­ing was excised along­side its atten­dant comedic effect. In Den­mark, after the nation­al tele­vi­sion net­work failed to broad­cast the sketch in 1985, an avalanche of view­er com­plaints has guar­an­teed its sub­se­quent year­ly appear­ance. Although the cat­e­go­ry is now defunct, the clip held the Guin­ness World Record for Most Fre­quent­ly Repeat­ed TV Pro­gram. As for why the video’s gar­nered so much atten­tion? No one’s real­ly sure. The Wall Street Jour­nal’s Todd Buell posits that the sketch’s easy to under­stand Eng­lish com­bined with a Ger­man long­ing for secu­ri­ty and sim­plic­i­ty may have led to its icon­ic sta­tus. To me, how­ev­er, it seems that the fine­ly tuned phys­i­cal com­e­dy trans­lates read­i­ly beyond any lin­guis­tic bound­aries, and sim­ply hit the right note at the right time.

Above, you can view the orig­i­nal 18-minute comedic opus and cel­e­brate New Year’s day in the same way that much of Europe brought in 2014 (don’t mind the Ger­man intro­duc­tion — the video is in Eng­lish). In future years, you can always find Din­ner for One in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

From all of us at Open Cul­ture to you, have a hap­py new year!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

A New Year’s Wish from Neil Gaiman

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

 

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A Brief History of Hollywood Censorship and the Ratings System

in Film, History | December 31st, 2013

Cen­sor­ship, as most seri­ous film­go­ers know, shaped the sen­si­bil­i­ty of all the pic­tures we know from the “Gold­en Age” of Hol­ly­wood. It did so in the form of 1930’s “Motion Pic­ture Pro­duc­tion Code (also known as the Hays Code),” which “set up a small jury to review films for con­tent,” at first “still with­out teeth and large­ly mocked by indus­try insid­ers.” But that changed in a big way when “the Amer­i­can Bish­ops of the Roman Catholic Church orga­nized The Legion of Decen­cy and, in 1934, with the sup­port of Protes­tant and Jew­ish Orga­ni­za­tions, began call­ing for boy­cotts of films deemed unac­cept­able. [ … ] The Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, still reel­ing from the loss­es of 1933 due in large part to the delayed effects of the Great Depres­sion, were forced to act.” That sum­ma­ry comes from “The His­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood Cen­sor­ship and the Rat­ings Sys­tem,” a brief but in-depth les­son pro­duced by Film­mak­er IQ. Its video ver­sion appears at the top. Below, you can watch 1941’s The Out­law, the bust size of whose star Jane Rus­sell had the cen­sors demand­ing “37 spe­cif­ic reshoots.”

The com­plete sto­ry of cen­sor­ship and rat­ings in Hol­ly­wood involves such ele­ments of Amer­i­can his­to­ry and cul­ture as not just the Great Depres­sion and the Roman Catholic Church, but the 1919 World Series Gam­bling scan­dal, the Chicago’s Women’s Munic­i­pal League, mighty sys­tems of pro­duc­tion, the sport of box­ing, Howard Hugh­es, and of course, the almighty dol­lar. Even­tu­al­ly, film­mak­ers began to sim­ply defy the Hays Code; you can watch Otto Pre­minger’s famous exam­ple of just that, the 1953 com­e­dy The Moon is Blue (pos­sessed, cen­sors said, of “an unac­cept­ably light atti­tude towards seduc­tion, illic­it sex, chasti­ty, and vir­gin­i­ty”). In 1968, the weak­ened Code’s replace­ment arrived: the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca’s Rat­ings sys­tem and its still-famil­iar G, PG, R, and X (PG-13 was intro­duced in 1984; NC-17 replaced X in 1990). Quaint as these mea­sures may now seem, the les­son tells us that con­tro­ver­sy has remained. “Some may say that films were sex­i­er and scari­er under the cen­sor­ship of the pro­duc­tion code – for noth­ing that can be seen is as tan­ta­liz­ing and hor­ri­fy­ing as what the imag­i­na­tion and antic­i­pa­tion can con­jure. But giv­en the choice between free­dom and cen­sor­ship, free­dom is the only sus­tain­able option.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Hol­ly­wood Cen­sored

Did Hol­ly­wood Movies Stu­dios “Col­lab­o­rate” with Hitler Dur­ing WW II? His­to­ri­an Makes the Case

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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On Christmas, Browse A Historical Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

in Archives, Creativity, Education, History, Life | December 25th, 2013

paratroops in action

The Strong Nation­al Muse­um of Play, locat­ed in Rochester, NY, is a fun children’s muse­um. But the insti­tu­tion also has seri­ous research archives, stuffed with toys, games, and records of the toy indus­try. Its online col­lec­tions, which cur­rent­ly boast 55,068 objects, take a hol­i­day brows­er on a trip into a fig­u­ra­tive grandma’s attic, chock-full of the play­things peo­ple loved in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies.

The online archives are divid­ed into four cat­e­gories: “Toys”, “Dolls”, “Games”, and “More.” Each of these four sec­tions is fur­ther sub­di­vid­ed into top­i­cal­ly-spe­cif­ic groups, cho­sen by the archivists.

The collection’s strength is also its weak­ness: there are so many toys that it can be easy to get over­whelmed. The sub­ject divi­sions are help­ful here. As some­body with an inter­est in gen­der and child­hood, I found myself fas­ci­nat­ed by the house­keep­ing toys—kids used to use ovens that were heat­ed with real coals!—and that was an easy way to nar­row down my browse.  Sub­ject group­ings for toy sol­diers, celebri­ty dolls, and board games also piqued my inter­est.

It’s fun to look around for toys from your own child­hood (I found a few), but if you’re inter­est­ed in his­to­ry, you might find the echoes of his­tor­i­cal events to be even more intrigu­ing. Late-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry kids played with a paper doll inspired by the cir­cus celebri­ty Tom Thumb; chil­dren of the 1930s had licensed dolls of the media-sen­sa­tion Dionne Quin­tu­plets; a play­set from 1940 fea­tured grim, suit­ed-up “Para­troops in Action.”

Mou­s­ing over the thumb­nails will allow you to see the item’s name. If you see a blue “Learn More” tag, be sure to click through; that means that the item’s image will be accom­pa­nied by an inter­pre­tive his­tor­i­cal note writ­ten by the Strong’s archivists. These vary in length, and con­tain intrigu­ing tid­bits. Did you know, for exam­ple, that Hol­ly Hob­bie was a real per­son: the artist Hol­ly Ulinkas Hob­bie? Or that the famous artist Charles Dana Gib­son had a now-for­got­ten fol­low­er, Nell Brink­ley, who illus­trat­ed the flap­per era?

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

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Read 100 Entries From America’s Most Unique Dictionary, Now Available Online For The First Time

in English Language, History | December 21st, 2013

Ear­li­er this year, we wrote about the region­al dif­fer­ences in how Amer­i­cans refer to soft drinks. An explo­ration of the var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal names for a car­bon­at­ed bev­er­age is all well and good, but it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that America’s lex­i­cal vari­a­tions are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more col­or­ful than “soda,” (East and West coasts), “coke,” (South), and “pop” (Mid­west and North­west).

For those inter­est­ed in expe­ri­enc­ing the full range of ver­bal Amer­i­cana, the Dic­tio­nary of Amer­i­can Region­al Eng­lish (DARE) has final­ly become avail­able online after 47 years of work. Unlike any oth­er dic­tio­nary, DARE attempts to doc­u­ment the region­al aspects of Amer­i­can Eng­lish, and sys­tem­atize the wide array of  geo­graph­i­cal­ly unique terms and expres­sions. As John McWhort­er notes in The New Repub­lic, this labor of lin­guis­tic love con­tains some 60,000 entries from 1,002 com­mu­ni­ties, col­lect­ed between 1965 and 1970. Of course, as McWhort­er points out, some of the terms indexed in DARE are dat­ed, hav­ing suc­cumbed to mass-media’s democ­ra­tiz­ing effects on lan­guage over the course of DARE’s lengthy prepa­ra­tion. Still, with entries like “rich rel­a­tives” (dust bun­nies) and “Cana­di­an per­jun­kety” (pim­ples), the dic­tio­nary pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse of the ver­bal curios, both old and new, that have sprung up around the coun­try.

Although DARE is a sub­scrip­tion-based ser­vice, its web­site pro­vides vis­i­tors with a list of 100 free and brows­able terms. We’ve includ­ed a selec­tion below:

  • “To acknowl­edge the corn – to admit to being drunk; by exten­sion, to admit to any mis­take, fault, or impro­pri­ety (for­mer­ly wide­spread, now chiefly Mid­land).”
  • “Flan­nel cake – pan­cake (chiefly Appalachi­an)”
  • “Flea in one’s ear – A hint, warn­ing, dis­qui­et­ing dis­clo­sure; a rebuke (chiefly North­east)”
  • “Lucy Bowles – loose bow­els, diar­rhea (scat­tered, but esp. Penn­syl­va­nia, New Jer­sey, south­east­ern New York)”
  • “Slick and a promise – A hasty or super­fi­cial per­for­mance of a task (chiefly New Jer­sey)”

Addi­tion­al­ly, a sam­ple of audio record­ings demon­strat­ing the breadth of accents and vocab­u­lar­ies in var­i­ous gen­er­a­tions, cities, and class­es dur­ing the ‘60s may be found on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son DARE web­site.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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